Could even add an `operation` parameter to let the caller select actions,
including 'auto'  implemented as Larry suggests. Sometimes you feel like
trusting the user's xdg-open preferences/settings. Sometimes you don't.
Easy enough to let the caller choose, rather than the OS.

    operation in ['auto', 'run', 'edit', 'display', 'browse', 'explore',
'share', 'send', 'like', 'email', 'open', 'xdg-open', ...] # can
be incrementally added/implemented

Each op requires 1 conditional and gives a lot more utility without
requiring much more launch/action code that hasn't already been
tested/debugged on all relevant platforms. And the `operation` parameter is
a semi-standard used by MS, easing the transition for Win-devs migrating
gui code to python and linux (or cross-platform implementations).

On Fri, May 25, 2012 at 4:40 AM, Larry Hastings <report@bugs.python.org>wrote:

>
> Larry Hastings <larry@hastings.org> added the comment:
>
> > As an example, ``os.startfile("a.py")`` will usually run `a.py`
> > in the Python interpreter, while ``xdg-open a.py`` it will
> > usually open the source code in an editor on Linux.
>
> Well, so how about on UNIX shutil.launch (or whatever it's called) first
> checks to see if we're referring to a file.  If we are, check to see if
> it's marked executable.  If it is, execute it under a shell.  Failing
> *that* we could run xdg-open where available.
>
> ----------
> nosy: +larry
>
> _______________________________________
> Python tracker <report@bugs.python.org>
> <http://bugs.python.org/issue3177>
> _______________________________________
>