Why does opening from the terminal in MacOS Catalina 10.15.7 fail?

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Asked 3 years ago

Modified 3 years ago

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From a terminal prompt, when I do:

open -a /Users/homer/Applications/Preview /Users/homer/Downloads/test.jpg

I get an error:

FSPathMakeRef(/Users/homer/Applications/Preview) failed with error -43.

But if I do:

open /Users/homer/Downloads/test.jpg

the image is opened in Preview just fine.

What is going on?

asked Oct 30, 2020 at 1:02

Nona

1213 bronze badges

3

I’m puzzled why Preview.app is in ~/Applications and not where Catalina installed it?
– bmike ♦
Oct 30, 2020 at 1:21
1

Edited the question, thx
– Nona
Oct 30, 2020 at 1:49
1

Great question +1 - I’ll try to find time this weekend to reproduce it. Might just be sandbox restrictions or firmlinks assembling multiple application folders into one for Finder. apple.stackexchange.com/a/372960/5472
– bmike ♦
Oct 30, 2020 at 1:58
1

For context, this was done on a Macbook Pro (Mid 2014) 1398A and was upgraded from Mojave to Catalina, so it wasn't done on a fresh Catalina install if that makes a difference.
– Nona
Oct 30, 2020 at 2:02
1

open -a /System/Applications/Preview.app file.png works for me. Note the default install location of /System/Applications, and the .app extension, which I found I needed to include.
– Matthias
Oct 30, 2020 at 5:22

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