A Fake File Manager (Shallow Thoughts)

A Fake File Manager

After learning how to prevent RawTherapee from intercepting requests for a file manager, I'm happy not to have unwanted RawTherapee windows randomly popping up whenever some program decides it wants to show me a directory. For instance, in Firefox's Download Manager, there's a little folder icon you can click on -- but it doesn't do anything useful if you don't have a file manager installed.

I suppose I could install a file manager; thunar is relatively lightweight. But it seems silly to have to install a whole GUI program I'll never otherwise use just to find out where files were stored. Once I know where to look, a terminal, with shell autocomplete, works fine for navigating my directories, and is much faster and less RSI-inducing than a mouse-based file manager.

Which raises the question: can I make the system do something useful on directory requests, and just show me where the file was stored, or give me a terminal already chdired to the right place? Sort of a fake file manager?

It turned out to be fairly easy.

Read more ...