use Qt to find which editor is installed on a Linux machine

Question

In my C++/Qt program I would like to know which text editor is available on user's Linux machine so that I can use it to open a text file from my program. There are several widely used editors such as gedit, kate and a few more so I would like to check these. My naive intention was to use QProcess in combinations with command -v foobar as in How to check if a program exists from a Bash script? but unfortunately this does not seem to be doing what I expect. I hoped that the exit codes could indicate the result.

qDebug() << QProcess::execute("command -v kate") << QProcess::execute("command -v gedit");

... but the processes did not even started and the line returned -2 -2.

Is there any way to achieve what I need?

Soheil Armin · Accepted Answer · 2019-11-02T01:28:07.913

1

You need to run it through sh, setProcessChannelMode to get error of the child of sh command :

QProcess chkexists;
chkexists.setProcessChannelMode(QProcess::MergedChannels);
chkexists.start("sh", QStringList()<<"-c"<<"command -v kate");
chkexists.waitForFinished();
if(chkexists.exitCode()==0){
////editor exists
}

edited Nov 02 '19 at 01:28

answered Nov 02 '19 at 00:09

Soheil Armin

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I tried, I call `waitForFinished()` and then I query the exit code. But then it returns exit code 0 even for editors which are not installed. – HiFile.app - best file manager Nov 02 '19 at 00:13
@V.K. just edited my answer. you should set process channel mode to merged. – Soheil Armin Nov 02 '19 at 00:28
To make the solution complete, I then need to call `chkexists.waitForFinished();` and then compare `chkexists.exitCode() == 0;` which returns `true`/`false` indicating whether the program is installed or not. This works in my case very well. – HiFile.app - best file manager Nov 02 '19 at 01:05

use Qt to find which editor is installed on a Linux machine

1 Answers1