Linux C - how to open a pdf file with default reader

Applications Programming
1

sorry if i repost this...

hi.. i want to ask how to open pdf files using C in Linux

in Windows, i just use this code:
ShellExecute(GetDesktopWindow(), "open", "D:\\Folder\\File.pdf", NULL, NULL, SW_SHOWNORMAL);

thanks for advance...

2

there's no such thing as default readers in unix.
some desktop environments may support it.

there's no registry in unix.

3

Good Evening,

One possibility is given below (errors checking is left to the readers...)

#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>

const char* pdf_reader="evince "; /* put the name of your pdf reader here */

void
read_pdf(const char* name)
{
   char cmd[128];

   strcpy(cmd, pdf_reader);
   strncat(cmd, name, sizeof(cmd));
   system(cmd);
}

Cheers,
Lo�c

4

I know Gnome has a utility program, gnome-open, which will take the file you pass to it and open that with the default application, whatever that is - presumably there's something similar for KDE and other popular desktop environments?

If you want it to be fairly portable, you could:

1) Check for the presence of, e.g. gnome-open with system("gnome-open --version"), and so on for other programs until you find one,

2) If that doesn't work, go down a similar list of raw pdf viewers (system("evince --version"), etc), and

3) If you still can't find one, prompt the user for the name of a program.

Apart from that, I don't think there's a lot else you can do.