Question

24

Equivalent of .URL file on Ubuntu

rated 0 times [ 24] [ 0] / answers: 1 / hits: 15660 / 2 Years ago, wed, may 4, 2022, 9:58:31

An URL link has been saved in *.url file via Windows. If you double click the file in Windows, it will open your default browser to the indicated URL.
Here is an example of *.url file content:

[InternetShortcut]

URL=http://abdennour-insat.blogspot.com/

When the same file is copied on Ubuntu OS, Ubuntu handles it such as a text file. Hence, the browser does not open the URL when double-clicking the file.

My question is: what is the equivalent of *.url file in Linux to make shortcut file for URLs?

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antebrow

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1 Year ago

answered 2 Years ago ngthmated · Accepted Answer

In Ubuntu an URL shortcut is stored in a .desktop file as follow (for example):

[Desktop Entry]

Encoding=UTF-8

Name=Link to Best Practices Software engineering

Type=Link

URL=http://abdennour-insat.blogspot.com/

Icon=text-html

If you still want to open your Windows URL files in Ubuntu, here is described how you can do it:

How to Open .url Internet Explorer Shortcuts in Ubuntu Using Firefox.

The Perl script given in that article appears to be broken, but the following code should do the same thing correctly:

#!/usr/bin/perl

# Script to make Microsoft Windows Internet Shortcuts (*.url) work on Linux.



my $browser = 'sensible-browser';  # use the system default browser



while (<>) {

    # match any line of the form "URL = something-without-spaces"

    if (/^s*URLs*=s*(S+)s*$/) {

        exec $browser, $1;         # successful exec never returns

        die "$0: could not launch $browser: $!

";

    }

}