Mac OS Leopard: /usr/bin/open -b org.mozilla.firefox 'file:///tmp/test.html/?a=b&c=d' does not work
I just ran into a bug where by a command like this:
> /usr/bin/open -b org.mozilla.firefox 'file:///tmp/test.html/?a=b&c=d'
does not work correctly. It turns out the query string such as '?a=b&c=d' does not get passed to the Firefox as evident in the address bar. The http:// protocol based URLs work correctly.
I suspect the #reference to go to a specific anchor will also not work. I have not tried it though.
This is a bug (regression) on Mac OS Leopard (10.5). It use to work on Mac OS Tiger (10.4). I have already filed a bug with Apple for this.
BTW I have to use the /usr/bin/open command to reliably and repeatedly open a URL in Firefox (i.e. when Firefox is already running or not). That is because if I use the command such as:
> /Application/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox 'file:///tmp/test.html/?a=b&c=d'
when Firefox is already running it give me an error along the lines of "There is already an instance of Firefox running. You can only run one instance of Firefox.".
I thought this information may be useful to some folks who are struggling with the same issue.
Posted by sandipchitale
( Apr 02 2008, 10:28:20 AM PDT ) Permalink
Trackback URL: http://blogs.sun.com/scblog/entry/mac_os_leopard_usr_bin
Wednesday April 02, 2008 
Sandip Chitale's blog (scblog)
I am starting to wonder if query strings are not valid for a file:// protocol and therefore this is not really a bug. Does anyone know for sure? I guess I need to check in the RFC. In some sense it makes sense because there is no server to interpret the query string (unlike in case of http:// protocol).
However the #reference is interpreted by the Browser and thus is still useful to go to the specific anchor in the file. However that does not seem to work either.
Posted by Sandip on April 03, 2008 at 10:05 AM PDT #