How to escape spaces in .desktop files Exec line

Question

I want to make a .desktop file like described here.

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Sublime Text 2
GenericName=Sublime Text 2
Comment=Edit text files
Exec=/home/user/opt/sublime/Sublime Text 2/sublime_text %U

However, running that from Nautilus's context menu using Open with this gives me

Could not find '/home/user/opt/sublime/Sublime'

So I tried

Exec="/home/user/opt/sublime/Sublime Text 2/sublime_text" %U

and got

Text ended before matching quote was found for ". (The text was '"/home/user/opt/sublime/Sublime')

What is the correct way to escape spaces in the Exec line of .desktop files?

Solution 1

According to the desktop entry specification ASCII space may be represented by the \s escape sequence (for string and localestring values).

Solution 2

Precede each space by a backslash:

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Sublime Text 2
GenericName=Sublime Text 2
Comment=Edit text files
Exec=/home/user/opt/sublime/Sublime\ Text\ 2/sublime_text %U

Solution 3

I've got the same problem when following installation instructions from (http://monkeyhacks.com/post/how-to-install-sublime-text-2-on-ubuntu-14-04) site.. So my solution was:

1. Remove/delete the soft link called "sublime" from /usr/bin

2. Remove all whitespaces of "Sublime Text 2" folder by renaming it to "SublimeText2"

3. Re Create a soft link in /usr/bin/:

   sudo ln -s /opt/SublimeText2/sublime_text /usr/bin/sublime
   

4. Make the .desktop file including:

   Exec=/opt/SublimeText2/sublime_text %U
   Icon=/opt/SublimeText2/Icon/48x48/sublime_text.png
   

Solution 4

I was having exactly the same problem! After trying various escaping/quoting patterns, I decided the simplest solution was to have a symbolic link to sublime_text on my $PATH (or you could use a command-line alias).

[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Type=Application
Terminal=false
Icon[C]=/usr/share/Sublime Text 2/Icon/256x256/sublime_text.png
Name[C]=Sublime Text 2
Exec=Sublime-Text-2 %U
Comment[C]=Text Editor
Name=Sublime Text 2
Comment=Text Editor
Icon=/usr/share/Sublime Text 2/Icon/256x256/sublime_text.png
X-Desktop-File-Install-Version=0.21

Solution 5

Have you tried using ' ' quotes instead of " " quotes? I have a customised .desktop file with spaces in the Exec line, and mine works with ' ' quotes.

View more solutions

Comments

[nh2]

That does not work: Text ended just after a '\' character. (The text was '/home/user/opt/sublime/Sublime\')

[January]

Funny, it works for me.

[nh2]

Do we use the same versions? GNOME nautilus 3.4.2 on 12.04.

[nh2]

This is a sensible workaround, but we still don't know how we are meant to use spaces in .desktop files.

[c24w]

Agreed, although to me it just seems buggy in the way Exec is parsed, rather than us implementing incorrectly. It interprets a space as the end of the value, which is odd, since you can use unescaped spaces / unquoted strings for paths in the other properties!

[hsandt]

Works for me on Ubuntu 16.04, as well as double quotes by the way. However, DO NOT escape spaces nor quote the Path and Icon values, it may cause the application not to run (on my computer, the dash icon blinks but does nothing, not even open the terminal even if Terminal=true). Same issue if you don't escape Exec, by the way, so you can imagine it took me some time to find what to do with each line of the .desktop!

[David Foerster]

This solution doesn't pass arguments, e. g. file paths, to the ultimately invoked command. -1

[KDØBPV]

Huh. Apparently it's also not reliable. I tested this solution before posting it, and it worked. But then I modified my test to check if you were right, and now it's NOT working, even after restoring it to how it was working. Weird.

[Adrian Lopez]

Weird... This works if I run the launcher manually, but it doesn't on autostart. This feature is super bugged.

[Aaron Franke]

Doesn't work on XFCE.

[user278801]

In my case it works: Exec=sh -c ' "/home/user/opt/sublime/Sublime Text 2/sublime_text" "%U" '