Git Bash bash: open: command not found

git bash git-bash
bogenwan picture bogenwan · Mar 5, 2016 · Viewed 36.1k times · Source

I'm new to Git Bash, just freshly downloaded this for use in my class today, on the first class module it ask me to cd in to different directory and ls the content which works perfectly fine in Git Bash, then it ask me to open a README.md file in a folder with the command:

open README.md

then this error message show up:

bash: open: command not found

I know I cd in to the correct folder, and ls does shows the the README.md file, this is a freshly installed and most updated Git Bash, can't imagine there would be a missing link or altered in this program... what can I do? please help thank you!

I'm using Windows 8 with Git for windows

Answer

janos picture janos · Mar 5, 2016

bash: open: command not found

This error message is trying to tell you that there is no such command called "open". There's nothing wrong with the README.md.

  • OSX - open is a universal opener in OSX
  • Linux - has xdg-open
  • Windows - use start

But you don't need to take the instructions literally. It's not really important how you open the readme file. You can open it with the less command to view the content inside the terminal, or you can open it with notepad for editing in a text editor.

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