NAME

     vis-open — Interactively select a file to open

SYNOPSIS

     vis-open [-p prompt] [-f] [--] [files]

     vis-open -h

DESCRIPTION

     vis-open takes a list of filenames and directories on the command-line and displays them in
     a menu for the user to select one.  If the user selects a directory (including ..), the
     directory contents are displayed as a fresh menu.  Once the user has selected a filename,
     its absolute path is printed to standard output.

     vis-open uses vis-menu(1) as its user-interface, so see that page for more details.

     -p prompt
           Display prompt before the list of items.  This is passed straight through to
           vis-menu(1).

     -f    Normally, if vis-open is provided with a single filename or directory argument, it
           will automatically select it (printing the filename to standard output, or presenting
           a new menu with the contents of the directory).  If -f is provided, vis-open will
           always present the arguments it's given, even if there's only one.

     --    If this token is encountered before the first non-option argument, all following
           arguments will be treated as menu-items, even if they would otherwise be valid
           command-line options.

           If encountered after the first non-option argument, or after a previous instance of --
           it is treated as a menu-item.

     files
           File and directory names to be presented to the user.  If a name does not exist on the
           filesystem and the user selects it, it is treated as a file.

     -h    If present, vis-open prints a usage summary and exits, ignoring any other flag and
           arguments.

EXIT STATUS

     The vis-open utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.

     In particular, like vis-menu(1), vis-open prints nothing and sets its exit status to 1 if
     the user refused to select a file.

EXAMPLES

           CHOICE=$(vis-open -p "Select a file to stat")
           if [ $? -gt 0 ]; then
                   echo "No selection was made, or an error occurred"
           else
                   stat "$CHOICE"
           fi

SEE ALSO

     vis(1), vis-menu(1)

BUGS

     Because vis-open uses ls(1) to obtain the contents of a directory, weird things might happen
     if you have control-characters in your filenames.