Feature request: select file when opening directory

[pglpm]

Fsearch (0.3.alpha0) has the great possibility of opening the directory containing an item in the result list, if one clicks on the "path" column. This is useful if one has to do extra file operations with the file from the result list, or maybe compare files that have close modification times (by time-sorting the directory). In my case (Ubuntu 20.04, KDE 5.18.8) the directory is simply opened, and I need to look for the file there, which can take a while with large directories, and sometimes requires starting a local search (with Dolphin in my case).

If possible it would be convenient to have the file automatically selected within the directory, when the latter is opened by Fsearch; possibly as an option in the settings. Another possibility is to allow the specification of a program to perform the directory-opening. For example, if I call dolphin [filename], then the file directory is opened and the file is also selected therein.

Cheers!

[cboxdoerfer]

If possible it would be convenient to have the file automatically selected within the directory, when the latter is opened by Fsearch; possibly as an option in the settings.

Unfortunately there's no standard among file managers to select the a certain file. Some don't support this feature at all, some require a certain command line option, some do it automatically, ... So it's not really possible to make this work automatically from FSearch with a simple checkbox in the settings.

Another possibility is to allow the specification of a program to perform the directory-opening. For example, if I call dolphin [filename], then the file directory is opened and the file is also selected therein.

That's already possible, but the setting is not yet exposed in the graphical preferences. To enable it do the following:

1. Close FSearch
2. Open ~/.config/fsearch/fsearch.conf with a text editor of your choice
3. Add the following at the end of the file:

    [Applications]
    folder_open_cmd=dolphin --select {path_full}

Now when you double click on the path column the files should get selected in Dolphin.

[pglpm]

Thank you so much Christian, this is a life-changer!
Changing a config file is simple, so this is great. Maybe this was in the Help documents – apologies if I missed it in case!

[gala8y]

Hi, is this possible with Nemo? I searched a bit for a similar syntax, but no go.

[cboxdoerfer]

@gala8y No, I don't think Nemo supports that feature. Last time I tried it, it did select files when you passed a file as an argument, e.g. nemo /home/test/test.txt, but this doesn't work when you pass a folder, because it opens it instead of selecting it.

So you might want to open a feature request for that at https://github.com/linuxmint/nemo/issues, if this hasn't already been requested.

[xyTo]

@cboxdoerfer
thanks for the detailed explanation above.
.config modification works with FSearch 0.2.2 too - only with ctrl+enter (or context menu) not the double click on path though.

exposing this (at least for the supported file managers) would surely be appreciated.

[Jetcser]

I have been using it for more than a year, which is very inconvenient when locating a file. I didn't find this setting until today, lol. I even tried to modify the source code to achieve this function before. And now you only need to modify the configuration file. Thank you very much!