explore-with-dmenu

A handy, simple but flexible file explorer using dmenu written in bash.

Use the arrow-keys and type on the keyboard to find items and press <Enter> to navigate into folders or to open files with their default applications. Press <ESC> to exit at anytime. By default, explore-with-dmenu remembers your last selected entries and provides shortcuts to these.

The project is structured as follows:

.
├── .edmrc-sample               Example rc file.
├── explore-with-dmenu.sh       Main program.
├── LICENSE                     License definition.
├── README.md                   You are here now.
└── res                         Additional resources.

Installation

You can run the script explore-with-dmenu.sh directly on your console. I recommend assigning a global keyboard shortcut (see below).

Prerequisites & Dependencies

You need to have the utility dmenu (https://tools.suckless.org/dmenu) installed on your system. On Ubuntu 18, you can install it via:

sudo apt install dmenu

On Mac OS, install dmenu preferably with Homebrew:

brew install dmenu

Usage

Invoke the script to start dmenu:

./explore-with-dmenu.sh

A dmenu window will be drawn depicting some initial items. You can use the arrow keys to navigate through the list of shown items. Typing on the keyboard filters entries that do not contain the entered substring. Press <Enter> for a selection. If a folder has been selected, explore-with-dmenu.sh will open a new dmenu containing of the contents of the folder, including an option to open a terminal in that given directory, as well as options to open the current folder with a standard file browser ('.') or to step one folder-level up ('..'). Press <ESC> at anytime to exit.

Using a Global Keyboard Shortcut

explore-with-dmenu.sh becomes handy when you assign it to a global keyboard shortcut that you can trigger from anywhere in your graphical user interface.

On Ubuntu 18.04, you can go to: Settings > Devices > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts > +. There you can set a command's name, the path to the explore-with-dmenu.sh executable and a key combination.

Customizing

You can customize explore-with-dmenu.sh by adding a file .edmrc to the directory $HOME/.config. explore-with-dmenu.sh sources this file at startup and interpretes its contents as bash. This way, logic that may set certain variables can be executed at the start of explore-with-dmenu.sh.

There are 6 variables that explore-with-dmenu.sh takes into account:

• selected_path
• history_file
• max_history_entries
• choices
• open_command
• open_terminal_command

selected_path

selected_path represents the initial path explore-with-dmenu.sh is working on. This path will be prepended to all relative paths denoted in the choices array. selected_path defaults to $HOME.

history_file

history_file defines the path to the history file that stores the last n selected entries from prior runs. history_file defaults to "${HOME}/.config/.edm_history".

max_history_entries

max_history_entries specifies the maximum number of entries that will be retained in the history_file. If the history_file contains max_history_entries entries, newer entries will override older entries. max_history_entries defaults to 3.

choices

choices represents a bash array of initial items the user is represented by dmenu. For instance:

choices=(
    '<open terminal here>'              # add this special item to open a terminal at $selected_path
    '.'                                 # add this special item to open $selected_path
    '..'                                # add this special item for traverse to the parent folder
    'path/to/some/often/used/folder'    # add subdolders of $selected_path like this
    'path/to/some/often/used/file.txt'  # add files in folders under $selected_path like this
    "$(ls "$selected_path")"            # output of `ls` on the $selected_path
    "$(cat "$history_file")"            # recent entries from from prior runs
)

The first 3 denoted items, '<open terminal here>', '.' and '..', are special entries you may or may not add to your initial list of choices:

• '<open terminal here>' adds an item that, when selected, will open a terminal at the path given by selected_path. '<open terminal here>' is a special string.
• '.' reflects the current path, which is initially selected_path. Selecting this item makes explore-with-dmenu.sh open the selected_path with a default application, e.g. Finder.
• '..' denotes the upper level directory. This makes, on selection, explore-with-dmenu.sh enter the parent directory.

The next 2 next entries in the array choices contain paths relative to the initial selected_path that, i.e. ${selected_path}/path/to/some/often/used/folder and ${selected_path}/path/to/some/often/used/file.txt

The next entry "$(ls "$selected_path")" expands the output of ls and automatically creates entries for all the immediate subdirectories and files of selected_path.

The last entry "$(cat "$history_file")" adds the output of the history file and automatically creates entries for recently selected entries.

If not specified, choices defaults to:

choices=(
    '<open terminal here>'
    '.'
    '..'
    "$(ls ${selected_path})"
    "$(cat "$history_file")"
)

open_command

open_command stores the command that shall be used to open a selected file or folder. On Mac OS, it defaults to 'open' and to 'xdg-open' else.

open_terminal_command

open_terminal_command stores the command that shall be used to open a folder when <open terminal here> is selected. The command defaults to open -a Terminal on Mac OS and defaults to 'gnome-terminal --working-directory=' else. The latter would work on Ubuntu 18 and higher but may break on other systems, so change it to your needs.

Contributing

Work on your stuff locally, branch, commit and modify to your heart's content. If there is anything you can extend, fix or improve, please get in touch! Happy coding!

License

See LICENSE file.

Related Software

Please have a look into the following link for other browsers and other tools written with dmenu: https://tools.suckless.org/dmenu/scripts/

Known Issues

• On Linux, the default programs xdg-open and gnome-terminal that come e.g. with Ubuntu 18.04 are a default prerequisite. That may not work with some OSes out of the box, but you can configure it via your .edmrc. No checks happen however.

TODO

• make it work with Web URLs in the array choices. At least, xdg-open can handle URLs
• make the script take a custom rc-file as a command line option
• print "usage" string, when -h, --help or wrong parameters are handed in
• maybe rename explore-with-dmenu.sh to suckless-explore.sh