Nemo actions stopped working after Nemo update

[brunetton]

 * Nemo version 4.4.0
 * windowed nemo (file browser)
 * Distribution: Arch

Issue
Hi, I'm maintaining a Nemo actions pack. This repo contains a lot of Nemo actions I'm using everyday for my work.

For some reason (to use a script that executes the same command for a lot of files, showing a progress bar using zenity) I need to pass arguments to a custom script. This script call bash, making use of parameter expansion to remove file original extension and add .flac extension.

The complete call is:

Exec=<scripts/bash_action.rb "filename=\"{}\"; rm -f \"${filename%.*}.flac\"; flac --best \"$filename\"" %F>

This still worked well in v4.0.6 but stopped working after.

Steps to reproduce

Some tests made me find that the source of the problem is the % symbol in the Exec line, and the problem can be resumed to this POC:

• create an action like this one:

[Nemo Action]
Name=POC
Exec=<scripts/print.sh "%" %F>
EscapeSpaces=true
Selection=notnone
Mimetypes=text/plain

This action call print.sh script with a first argument: %, and then the list of selected files.

• create scripts/print.sh that only prints arguments it received:

#!/bin/bash
echo "received:" $*

Expected behaviour

received: % /path/to/the/selected/file.txt

Actual behaviour

received: % %F

Other information

• this worked well in v4.0.6

• if I remove the % in the Exec line: Exec=<scripts/print.sh "" %F> this works as expected

• I'm not sure, but I think that this problem have been included in that commit: 2edf5ff (related to Some issues with nemo actions #2107)

[mtwebster]

Your expected behavior - is that what you expect based on the action you have there?

Currently I get:

Action Spawning: /home/mtwebster/.local/share/nemo/actions/literal-exec.sh "%" %F
received: % %F

with a fix I was messing with (26f4736), I then get:

Action Spawning: /home/mtwebster/.local/share/nemo/actions/literal-exec.sh "%" /home/mtwebster/.bashrc
received: % /home/mtwebster/.bashrc

If you wish I can do a build for it to test.

[brunetton]

@mtwebster Sorry for long delay answer ! And thank you for your time

I made a mistake in my original report and I just re-edited it to make it more clear (I hope).

with a fix I was messing with (26f4736), I then get:

Action Spawning: /home/mtwebster/.local/share/nemo/actions/literal-exec.sh "%" /home/mtwebster/.bashrc
received: % /home/mtwebster/.bashrc

Yes, this fix seems to do the trick 🥳

It would be great is you could add this fix to master !

Thanks again

(@icarter09 can you consider reopening this issue, as this is still a problem in nemo 4.4.2 ?)

[brunetton]

ps: can't you use regex for parsing those complicated syntax ? I may be wrong but I've the feeling that you're defining a state machine to parse the .nemo_action file. This could be a lot easier by just defining a regex, what do you think ?
Thanks !

[mtwebster]

When I wrote this, I was a lot more ignorant than I am now - a lot of work in nemo-action.c could be simplified (the command-line construction especially) - as far as actually reading the entries in the action file, I think using the GKeyFile api is still probably the best way to go, if only because it's familiar and simple to use. I've never had a chance to revisit this simply because of the lack of time, and worry about regressions.

I'll try to refamiliarize myself with that patch and see if I can get it in for the next release.

[mtwebster]

I forgot about this commit: 5802d29

That might be sufficient for this case.