url_handler.pl(1)

NAME
url_handler.pl - Spawn appropriate viewer for a given URL

SYNOPSIS
url_handler.pl URL

DESCRIPTION
url_handler.pl takes an URL as argument and spawns the first executable viewer found in either $BROWSER_SCHEME or $BROWSER.

ENVIRONMENT

$BROWSER_SCHEME

The user's preferred utility to browse URLs of type SCHEME. May actually consist of a sequence of colon-separated browser commands to be tried in order until one succeeds. If a command part contains %s, the URL is substituted there, otherwise the browser command is simply called with the URL as its last argument. %% is replaced by a single percent sign (%), and %c is replaced by a colon (:). Examples:

$BROWSER_FTP="wget:ncftp"
$BROWSER_GOPHER="gopher:lynx:links"
$BROWSER_MAILTO="mutt:pine -url"
$BROWSER_NEWS="lynx"
$BROWSER_NNTP="lynx"

$BROWSER

The user's preferred utility to browse URLs for which there is no special viewer defined via $BROWSER_SCHEME. Again it may actually consist of a sequence of colon-separated browser commands to be tried in order until one succeeds. If a command part contains %s, the URL is substituted there, otherwise the browser command is simply called with the URL as its last argument. %% is replaced by a single percent sign (%), and %c is replaced by a colon (:). Examples:

$BROWSER="firefox -a firefox -remote openURL\(%s\):opera:konqueror:links2 -g:lynx:w3m"

SECURITY
url_handler.pl was designed to work together with tin(1) which only issues shell escaped absolute URLs thus url_handler.pl does not try hard to shell escape its input nor does it convert relative URLs into absolute ones! If you use url_handler.pl from other applications be sure to at least shell escape its input!

AUTHOR
Urs Janssen <urs@tin.org>

SEE ALSO
<http://www.catb.org/~esr/BROWSER/>